The Book Thief

Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, published in 2005, is set in Nazi Germany during the Second World War and follows Liesel Meminger, who is nine years old when she arrives in a small German town to live with foster parents. Her brother has died on the journey and been buried at a stop along the way, and her mother is no longer with her. Liesel steals her first book in the graveyard where her brother is buried, and her foster father, Hans Hubermann, helps her learn to read and write, working through the book with her page by page.

The novel is narrated by Death, who takes an interest in the girl and in the words she collects and shares, and whose account reaches beyond the household to people caught up in the war elsewhere. Liesel steals more books as the years pass, sometimes with her friend Rudy, while the household adjusts to the political realities closing in around it. Her foster parents take in and hide a Jewish man in the basement, and as the situation in Germany deteriorates the family's position becomes more dangerous. The war eventually reaches the town in the form of bombing raids, sending the family and their neighbours into cellars when the sirens sound.

The Book Thief was published in 2005 and was adapted into a feature film of the same name released in 2013.